News: "Sky Captain" 3D effects spawned on a Mac

Mac Central (via Yahoo news) has an interesting article on the production of the recently releaed film "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow." This film is notable in that for something based so heavily on special effects, the budget was relatively slim by Hollywood standards. The article describes how the special effects crew used a lot of blue screen trick and computer animation to place the actors in various exotic locales. Old footage of the late Sir Laurence Olivier was also dissected and incorporated into the movie. Unusually, the creative minds were convinced that Mac Powerbooks and G4s/G5s were up the task (the previous standard were UNIX-based SGI and Linux-based PC workstations). Notes the article:

"The shots were recorded to HD tape and digitized on a Power Mac equipped with a Kona card. On the post-production end, Hollings' team started with Power Mac G4s but moved to Power Mac G5s as soon as they were available. Three Xserves fed the digital artists their footage as they worked on it in Adobe After Effects, stripping out the bluescreens and replacing them with shots of New York City, Shangri-La, the Himalayas and other locations that the production never visited but was able to recreate in a stylized fashion."